> In this particular case, cognitive splitting occurs between perceptions of
> the attackers' skills and abilities and the difficulty to fly commercial
> jets. The enemies are often being perceived as dumber than they actually
> are - quite a common perception indeed. Operating a complex machinery is
> often perceived as more intellectually demanding than it actually is - a
> result of a common confusion between the skill required to build a machine
> and the skill required to operate it. It seems that learning to fly jets is
> not as difficult as many think. After all, there hundreds of thousands if
> not millions of pilots around the world.
I think that this really boils down to racism. The 9/11 movement is mostly comprised of privileged, white liberals. They find it easy to deny the agency of the brown people who really organized the plot. There is a conscious or subconscious assumption that "those people" or "those people living in caves" couldn't be smart and organized enough to throw serious egg on the face of the American empire.
And it doesn't surprise me that there is an overlap between the 9/11 conspiracy movement and the UFO wingnut movements. These folks are already used to denying that brown people could have built the pyramids or constructed the Nazca lines, so why not assume that Bush and his cronies organized the attacks?
Personally, I think that aliens invented Western culture. Michaelangelo was from Tau Ceti.
Chuck